


Atlas Shrugged

by petricholour



Series: Afterisms [1]
Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: M/M, Unrequited Love, all the angsting, in socks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-04
Updated: 2015-06-05
Packaged: 2018-03-29 02:01:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3878143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/petricholour/pseuds/petricholour
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Foggy leaves him in his apartment where the walls are closing in - what have I done what have I done what have I –Matt’s face crumples like a lost child, and he weeps openly for the first time in a decade. It hurts like hell.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A coda-slash-mediation upon "Nelson v. Murdock" because I like picking at bleeding wounds :)

Franklin Nelson makes Matt Murdock want to be generous with his mouth. To kiss kiss kiss over every inch of skin, kiss kiss kiss over his bright yellow smile and the constant softball in his hand. He makes Matt want to hug him every single day, good morning, good night; put his nose in his department store-scented hair. Foggy makes Matt giggle and thank god he can’t hear his heart rise an inch higher in his chest every time he laughs.

When Foggy Nelson breathes sharply and turns to ask him “Did you blow up those buildings? Shoot those cops?” he makes Matt Murdock feel a chasm open up inside his throat. Foggy is holding himself four feet away, tense, and strange, thrumming with distrust. When Foggy leaves him in his apartment where the walls are closing in _what have I done what have I done what have I_ –Matt’s face crumples like a lost child, and he weeps openly for the first time in a decade. It hurts like hell.

Time passes slowly.

Injured this badly, Matt feels adrift in the pieces of gauze and tissue paper and leftover vials of painkillers that surround his couch like the ripples around a shipwreck. The room tilts. Claire. There’s water somewhere, he thinks, his mind bleary and hurt.

This is unfair. This is terribly unfair.

The bottle is at the foot of the couch, and he pushes his aching body towards it. Foggy left it there; just enough pain that Matt would know it’s punishment. Funny, how Foggy always understands the little things about Matt. How he plays him, how he’s always played him since Room 312 and _handsome duck_. Foggy's always believed he's in Matt's shadow; Foggy doesn't know he actually _is_ Matt's shadow, that Matt stitched himself to the blond boy with the big laugh and the small nose like a blind Peter Pan. The water slides down his parched throat, and Matt feels an acute lack of embarrassment for having wept almost half his body weight away. 

 

“And all this time, I actually felt bad for you.” Foggy’s eyebrows were painfully bunched up.

“I didn’t ask for that. I never… I never asked that”

They could say the same words again, but they would be talking past each other, blinded by their own sense of betrayal. Foggy is defiant in his protective love; he's given himself the lifelong responsibility of curling himself around Matt despite Matt’s _summa cum laude_ and effortless everything.  Anger clouds Matt’s heart; he never asked to be Goose.

What a load of shit. He loves(d?) being Goose.  _I'm unfair when I'm hurt_. 

 

“Just tell me one thing, Matt” Foggy had hissed “Are you even really blind?”

Matt remembers gasping softly in hurt, his mouth a small O of shock like Foggy had slapped him. Why should he expect Foggy to walk around him like he was made of glass? He wasn’t afraid to shove Matt when he wanted to, alright.

 

He blames himself, shuffling through his barren flat in his socks later, picking up the pieces of his life. As he searches through his cupboard for tea, he opens at least three wrong cabinets, his heart just not in it. Years and years of beatings and looking at terrible things by night yet he's never felt this dazed. He's lost his... his person.  If everyone in this world could choose someone that embodied the best of themselves, then Matt picked Foggy.

He's always been amazed that Foggy picked him right back. Stick would've hated it. (Huh) Despite Matt's best efforts, Foggy is his barometer of reality. Matt could be bleeding through his dress shirt or carrying bruises along the entire length of his legs but he only ever truly exhaled when Foggy walked into their cubbyhole office, and reassured Matt that yes, he was a good man, with the best friend in the whole world. There was Fisk, but there was always Foggy, holding the world the right side up with his butcher story and impromptu singing. Matt’s Atlas. A Foggy-Murdock index for keeping calm and carrying on.

 

Matt picks up his phone. Karen had called again, so he listens to her anxiety flooding the voicemail and lets himself feel thankful that she doesn’t know. “Hey, Matt. What… are you okay? Foggy told me you were in a car accident and jeez I’m so sorry. Are you still in pain? Do you need any help? I got my car fixed so I can come over whenever, okay? Just let me know, okay? Pick up the phone when you can. _Okay_. ...Well, it’s Karen.” She sounds as adrift as he feels.

She’s probably met Foggy by now. He wondered what she’d thought of Foggy’s pinched mouth today. Did Foggy go back to the office to stay? Did he take off? He’d listened to Foggy go down the stairs and down past the deli but then he gave up. Everything was ringing right after he walked out. Shit _fuck_ this shit. 

 

By late that night, he’s taken another dose of his meds. Claire has left them on the kitchen counter, with a note on his phone telling him when to take them. Matt notices Foggy hadn’t bothered helping. Hadn’t bothered staying beyond watching him struggle back to enough consciousness to yell at him. Fuck Foggy. Fuck Foggy for being everything. He tosses the pills back and swallows them dry. It doesn't work. He chokes and coughs and feels foolish and hurt and hurt and hurt. 

He passes out somewhere between one thought and the next. When he wakes up, its six thirty the next morning, and his entire body is still a giant wound. Yesterday’s bitterness looks wan. What was even the point? He pours himself cereal so slowly he’s lost his appetite by the time he’s done. Forces himself to eat.

 

Matt thought letting Foggy rifle through his outfit would make him feel cleaner, like Foggy had finally lifted his lungs up to the light to stare at the devil inside. Like Matt would be washed clean by Foggy's absolute focus. Repentance, and confession and penance all together in Foggy Nelson's unimpressed glare. He wanders over to the trunk painfully, nudges it shut with his foot. The clang sounds oddly final. His flat feels more silent today than it ever has. He’s hiding in here. By the time he finally picks up Karen’s call, her voice is tight with hurt and worry. She’s coming to his place in twenty.

 

“No, not okay! Can you read my mind? Can you predict the future? _What_?”

Foggy’s pacing so furiously it makes Matt’s eyes ache.

He sits down heavily. “What things do you just know?”

_I know my heart is breaking. No. Stick to the safe bits, Murdock._

“I know you haven’t showered since yesterday morning. But you rinsed your face in my kitchen sink” Foggy’s face is shocked and incredulous. “I know you had onions in your lunch two days ago". Shocked and embarrassed, now. He gets up again.

“I know you’re hungry…and tired.” Foggy’s shoes are scuffing the carpet. They still suddenly. “I know the more I say, the faster your heart beats”.

Matt hates himself the second it’s out of his mouth. The silence in the room rings like a bell.

“You can hear a heartbeat? From across the room?” Foggy rasps.

_I can always hear your heartbeat, Foggy. I’ve been listening to it for four years and change. It helped me sleep on some nights. I listen to it when you make me and Karen laugh, pulsing steadily behind your ribcage like a sun. I know, as sure as I’m blind, that your heartbeat jumped and stuttered when I touched your face that one time, and then you pulled away from my fingertips shaking your head. ‘Woah. Weird. Let’s never do that again.’ And then we went back to our beers and that moment was gone._

“Helps to anticipate behavior. When someone’s going to attack. When they’re lying” _Whether they’d kiss back if I kissed them. I can tell your stomach is roiling with the beginnings of acid reflux. You only get that when you feel helplessly angry; I remember you telling me about your iron Irish stomach. And you're beyond angry today. Please look at me, Foggy. Don't leave._

 

Everything gets even worse. Foggy accuses him of being a vigilante. Matt can't help but wince. Foggy always kept his Batman figure next to his dinosaurs, but he keeps his mouth shut. Karen. _Invasive_. The words twist Foggy’s mouth. There’s nothing he can even say right now; so he cowers there, a bit.

He cowers until he falls asleep against his will, suddenly slipping down against the pillow Foggy shoved under his head on the couch, only to wake up to the flashing lights of the giant billboard and Foggy’s stony silhouette. Matt feels translucent, like he could just float away, maybe, without Foggy's arm around his neck and his hand around Matt's elbow.

An ambulance goes by, its blue and red lights  probably floating on Matt's ceiling. Foggy breathes in deeply, and Matt waits for him to say something. And waits.

 

Karen’s at the door. She lets herself in. She has a balloon with her.

Matt moves like he’s two people. One Matt Murdock still clutching the couch cushions, listening to Foggy slam the door, and the other one; the one Karen’s come to see. He takes the balloon. Everything is off. He can’t pretend well today, even with his glasses on. Karen can tell (of course she can); she’s sharp, but kind. He's so grateful that she just says "You should take better care of yourself", but she shifts closer to him, touches his face. Her heart rate skyrockets, and she leaves in a rush. Huh. (He'll think about it later)

He holds the balloon for a long time.

 

“Don’t say that, don’t twist it around”. He’s pleading with Foggy, and he doesn't care.

He needs him to understand this. If Foggy doesn’t, Matt is lost.

When Foggy shakes his head and says, disappointed “Misspelling Hanukkah is a mistake. Attempted murder is something else”, Matt knows he’s not going to be okay for a while.

Atlas shrugged and shifted the entire world.

“I wouldn’t have kept this from you, Matt. Not from you”

 

For one moment, Matt wants to shout. Shake Foggy by the shoulders. _There is so much I've been keeping from you and I need to tell you oh god_. _(Don't leave). (I won't survive it)._

 

"You don’t know that. _You don’t know that_.”

Foggy is ready to go. His eyes are far away, his mouth is sad, and he smells like grief after two days in Matt's drawing room, watching over him sleeping - a good friend even when he felt cheated of Matt's trust. All he wants to do is stand up and grab onto Foggy by the collar of his blue shirt. _Of course it was real, Foggy. All of it_. To listen to his heartbeat and smell his department store-bought shampoo. Kiss him. And let it all go even more to hell.

Instead Matt says ‘Foggy'. '...Foggy!’ Foggy leaves.

 

Faint nausea - it's constant. He's only ever felt this sick to his stomach kneeling on the cold asphalt next to his father's body, the scent of blood hanging in the air. Like he was the one who'd been shot, and he couldn't breathe. Like he didn't know how to uncurl his legs anymore. 

Matt knows, as soon as he can walk more steadily, that he’s going to slide that cocktail napkin out from between the covers of the Braille Bible lying by his headboard.

That he’ll run his fingers over Foggy’s careful penmanship, and the little bolts in the signboard around ‘Nelson and Murdock. Attorneys at Law’. Remember Foggy's trust. Remember his disgust.

And then he’s going to put it with his suit. He’s going to put it somewhere Foggy doesn't want to look, along with the rest of himself.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The avocado, he decides, is a trial. Somehow this is not funny.

On the third day after he crashes through the window of his own apartment, half-dead, Claire comes over to check on the massive gash on his side. He sits still on the arm of his sofa, smells her coconut shampoo and the always-present hospital scent of her fingers. Claire works quietly, her hands quick but steady with practice, her heart beating slow and sure. There is a tenderness to her touch today, and she doesn’t chide him as much, holding words behind her teeth as she works. ‘There.’

Reaching out, he clasps her hand. She wouldn’t look up at him yet, packing her things with the other hand, and he wonders who is sparing whom the weight of things undiscussed. Eventually, she puts her other hand over his, and squeezes lightly. Her heart sounds tired.

‘Thank you. Again. For saving my life.’

‘You should thank your friend.’ She looks up now, and Matt can smell the cinnamon rolls she’d had on a snack break. ‘Did you. Did you tell him?’

‘He pretty much left me – ’

‘Oh.’

‘He left me no choice.’

‘Oh.’ A pause. ‘Are we two the only ones who know?’

He decides to tell her, because Claire may need all the help she could get one day.

‘More or less. Although... There’s a priest I’ve been going to for years. Father Lantom. We’ll get a latte someday together, maybe; I’ll give you his number’, he adds.

‘Hmm.’

As Claire finishes zipping up her bag and gets up, she takes a breath that sounds like a lot of words collecting themselves.

He waits it out.

‘Matt, I know it’s probably none of my business, but I need to say something about your friend.’  Her nurse shoes compress as she swings her weight from her left foot to her right and crosses her arms. ‘He’s mad, _you’re_ mad, and this whole thing stinks. It has to be different for you and him than it was for you and me.’ Matt wets his lips and shifts a little. ‘I was nobody, see? I found out by accident so it was okay, sensible, even, to lie to me, to keep me in the dark. And I don’t presume to tell you how to run things but if your friend hadn’t been in your flat right then you’d have been be very, _very_ dead.’

‘I know this, Claire'. He never said this to Foggy, the thank you; maybe he should have. Would it have made him stay? 'I can never make things alright.’

‘Not immediately, no, but you have to’, she insists. ‘You guys need to work out a system. Your friend Foggy knows about your Thing, so you have to talk to him about this directly. I can’t always be here, Matt! I may be on duty, I may be sick, or, or …gone’

‘You won’t be, Claire, I am so sorry. I won’t let anyone get you, ever.’ He looks as intently in her direction as a blind man can. _Never,_ he thinks at her, remembering the cold tremor in his soles when he found her in that garage, the Russians prowling arund her purposefully. Claire huffs and rolls her shoulder, silently acknowledging his intensity for a moment. She’s been cat-sitting again; there are angry claw marks on the back of her hands. 

‘I get that, Matt, but that’s not the point. Foggy was _hurt_. Also pissed like my goddamn terrifying mother when she found me smoking weed that one time. We’d just met and he looked like – like people _do',_ she gesticulated.

 _'_ I’m an ER nurse, so I’ve seen that face a hundred thousand times. Like when a father carries in a son who’s overdosed. It’s… distraught and betrayed and the beginning of a long, long road through very expensive therapy. You can’t afford so much time.’ Exhaling deeply, she says 'Fix this, so I can get back to my boring life again. Kind of.’

Matt stiffens. Not unexpected, but it still hurts. There won't ever be enough apologies in the world, not for those cuts on her face that took a fortnight to heal. Not for the terror in her voice over the phone. (I can't do this, Matt)

 _You can’t win ‘em all, young Padawan_ , echoes Foggy’s voice in his head, crisp as that winter night when they staggered across the quad. Claire’s no fool, and she’s not happy saying this, but she will, because you don’t get to be a Claire without being very brave, even without throwing a single punch. Matt envies her.

‘He gave me his card, and said he’s known you since college?' She steers away from all... this between them unsubtly. 'Jeez, Matt. You guys work together, so he can’t keep himself separate like I can, and until you work through this, I’m going to have to keep playing messenger. I don’t mind today, of course. But. You know.'

Matt gets up gingerly, turning away from her as he eases into his worn sweatshirt. It used to be Foggy's; he ~~borrowed~~ stole it from him and Foggy just laughed and called him a dickhead because _I can't squeeze into your law-student-hipster rags so quid NO pro buddy._ ‘He walked out the door quite decisively, Claire. Our firm may even be dis- dissolved, so that card’s useless, but you should keep the number.’

Claire catches his sharp wince as stands up, and she smooths his mussed-up hair as if on reflex, her hands warm as she says, ‘Yeah? Well he’s the one that called and asked me to check up on you, said that your neighbours hadn’t seen you for a few days. And I was going to come tomorrow, but he insisted. I think he’ll come around.’

Foggy will, Matt knows. Even when Foggy came back to the dorm one day to find his very recent ex kissing a very surprised Matt, he’d forgiven him. In an hour. In his very bones, Foggy is fair; he gives in to empathy, which makes him both the best and worst defence attorney ever. Slowly, he walks Claire to the door. ‘It was nice of you. To have come.’

‘Your flat looks like shit, by the way. Are you sure you don’t want me to help you clean up? It has been four days, Matt.’ She reached for him and lightly kissed his forehead. Matt let himself lean against her for a breath.

‘Take care. And get some damn armour already, mole boy.’ He laughs a little, despite the pain in his ribs. Claire seems to brighten at that. He kisses her back, touching foreheads with a small click of bone.

‘By the way, you shouldn’t have brought groceries.’

‘Would you believe Your friend bought them and dropped them off at the hospital? Yeah, really" she laughs, to Matt's surpised face. 'I’m still not sure how he managed to charm Preeti at the desk into letting him.’ They’re just inside his doorway, and when she bends to pick them up he smells… avocados.

He lets Claire put the bags on the kitchen counter, and then she rushes out, saying, ‘I’m late for my shift’. He listens to her going rat-tat-tat down the stairs, like a little girl, and it grounds him. The skin under his sweatshirt prickles with the new stitches, and he runs a hand over the area as he locks his door. It takes Matt an hour to put everything away, except the avocado, which he awkwardly puts beside the sink, where he swears it is looking at him accusingly.

Nothing else to be done about that, really, except hopeful and yet worse at the same time. Is this Foggy taking the high road? Making an inside joke? Taunting Matt in the most intimate way possible? It feels like everything and nothing. Fuck Foggy. There is something Claire had said about saints and martyrs that keeps whispering itself over and over in his head.

The avocado is, he decides, a trial.

Somehow this is not funny.

_That’s fruit!’ he’d giggled, his voice high-pitched with giddy, silly delight in the cold New York air, staggering drunkenly, an arm hooked around Foggy's neck like a mooring rope._

                                                                                                                        -----------------------

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

Matt had been waiting for an hour. An entire hour, and he was starting to get annoyed. Foggy must be out there right now, talking to one of his gazillion other friends on campus and – _oh_. There’s his heartbeat. He’s coming around the west side of the building, the warmth of the setting sun still radiating off the stone cladding, probably turning Foggy’s face redder than usual and he was laughing, something about Spongebob? With someone who wasn’t him, with a tread as heavy as Foggy’s. Male, tall, deep voice.

Matt frowns _. I’m not gonna be upset about this_ , he decides. Who the fuck _is_ that? We have nearly all our classes together I’ve never heard – I am _not_ going to be upset about this.

Shuffling his papers together, he settles down for a long night, determined to tell Foggy he’s not going anywhere tonight. _Sorry, lots to do_. Maybe Foggy would leave in disappointment, go to some other watering hole, and Matt could stew even harder in resentment, poking his social wounds and feeling like the blind, lonely pariah he really was.

Did Foggy have any business making friends other than Matt? Of course not, it was too easy for him anyway. And it was so, so hard for Matt and _I am not going to think about this._ He could be with Maria Apostolou right now.  ‘Hey, can I help you?’ she’d offered after class today, extending her wrist for him to grasp. Matt noticed she had a rosary bracelet hidden under the cuff of her shirt, and her throat smelt faintly of peaches. Matt smiled and thanked her. Maria gave him her number, wondering if they could set up a study session soon , sounding a little breathless and startled at her own daring as her heart fluttered. All he’d have to do was just call her.

But today was _Thursday_ , and Josie’s night with Foggy.

He tosses the apple core he’s been holding for the last fifteen minutes towards the trash can half hidden behind the leg of his desk chair. It lands with a satisfying rattle.

The door handle turns just a second later and Matt freezes, his arm still half-extended.

 ‘Argh, sorry buddy’, Foggy says as he enters and immediately turns his back to Matt, toeing off his shoes.

‘’Bout what?’ He draws his hand back and puts it safely into the pocket of his hoodie.

‘I just got caught up, y’know. The moot next Friday needs a few coordinators and Frank was like hey d’you wanna help out and I couldn’t really say no, so.’

‘Frank who?’

‘Friend of Marci’s’, Foggy offers absently.

’Yeah. Yeah, no it’s okay’

‘You still up for going to Josie’s? Paint the town red and all?’ Foggy’s rooting about in the closet, his voice muffled in the clothes. A sweater comes sailing out of the open doorway and lands next to Matt.  He has to resist the urge to snatch it out of the air.

‘Whoops, sorry. I was aiming for my bed’, Foggy apologises as he picks it up and starts taking his jumper off. Matt notices that’s where the smell of caramel’s been coming from; Foggy absolutely couldn’t resist candy apples.

‘I’m staying in tonight’

‘What no, really? Ma-at.’

Matt shucks his head and avoids looking in Foggy’s direction.

‘We got that Torts test on Monday’

‘And? You can’t spare one night from your hardcore nerding to devote to Josie's swill? What happened to sweet oblivion?

‘I’m sure someone else will be willing to go with you.’

‘Dude. Come on. What happened? ’

‘I’m tired’, Matt scrunches up his nose.

‘I hear you. I am literally so wiped right now I could sleep right here in the closet buuut this room just stinks of miserable and Torts so let’s get out of here, please.’

Silence. Matt can hold on to a resolution pretty well, and some part of him still wants to punish Foggy for being a blazing sun in a social solar system while Matt circles around him like a stubbly moon. They’ve been roommates for nearly three months now, and Matt is absurdly unable to keep himself aloof from his intensely likeable roommate. Neither are any of their classmates. Foggy has five times the number of contacts on his phone than Matt does, and he seems to know each and every single person on campus, right down to the janitors. Some days he’s sure Foggy’s going to realize that being roommates doesn’t obligate you to be the thickest of thieves and he’s going to get himself a Foggy too. He’s used to it, because it’s always been this way.

After the accident, he lost all his friends. It seemed like the other nine year-olds didn't quite know what to do with their friend who suddenly couldn't see anymore. Their street in Hell’s Kitchen was always overrun with kids whose parents worked multiple jobs, and the rag-tag, shabbil dressed kids had a definite sense of commnity. Just not Matt. Not since then. They stuck with him for a while, but when they realized Matt couldn’t run around with them anymore, they started avoiding him. The orphanage, later, was only fractionally better because the nuns took him on as a saintly martyr, when he just wanted to be outside tossing a ball with the older kids.  

Faced with Matt's silence, Foggy’s starting to become hesitant now. Eventually there’s a sigh as he flops on to his bed.

‘Fine. Josie’s night stands cancelled due to Grump Murdock, who clearly is mad about something he won’t tell his best friend about.’

Best friend.

That’s… the first time anyone has ever called him that.  

A little sheepish, Matt sits and strokes his fingers over raised letters he can’t really comprehend while Foggy gazes off into space. They actually stay like that for an hour, Foggy genuinely settling down into a proto-nap state, and Matt can’t even believe Foggy is still here, unquestioning and patient. Matt is so taken aback that eventually he abruptly gets up and says ‘Yeah, alright then’, and winds his muffler about his neck before Foggy even sits up.

He assumes Foggy’s smiling at him, from the steady beat of his heart, and Matt doesn’t want to think about how badly he wants to run his hands over that smile, and see what it really looks like. That’s his best friend. Matt is someone’s best friend. Foggy’s. _Take that, gazillion friends_.

Matt smiles back.

‘Awesome.’

**

Two drinks down Foggy turns to him, and asks quite solemnly ‘What was that about, though?’

Matt reaches for the peanuts to avoid having to answer, and Foggy nudges the bowl towards his knuckles wordlessly.

‘Foggy, why’re you so obsessed with me?”’

Foggy snorts ‘Boo, you _whore.’_

*

**

 

 

The next two days are agony.

He decides to visit the office, only to run into Foggy leaving. Not running into, precisely because Matt heard him from a block away and stood outside the hardware store for a good five minutes before taking a deep breath and climbing up. The avocado is still standing next to his sink, getting overripe and making the flat smell like… Fuck this, he’s going to look Foggy in the face.

‘So he’s not a terrorist anymore?’ Karen sounds puzzled.

Foggy takes a half a breath before, and half a breath after saying ‘I don’t know what he is’.

There's palpable discomfort when Matt appears in the doorway and Foggy brushes by with a box in his hands, exactly like that day they left Landman and Zack, an entire lifetime ago. But he has the file Matt gave Ben, and he’s taking it home with him. He smells like Josie’s.

It’s a start.

Karen talks to him when he walks in and makes him coffee – very sweet, the way he likes it, but her voice is off like she’s talking across a very bad telephone connection but she's trying to drown out that fact with chatter. There are blank spaces between her breaths, where her heart hitches and her stomach rolls over with nausea.

She smells like vodka too. When did this start falling apart? How long have they been waiting around, not paying enough attention to each other? Matt gently nudges at her elbow. ‘Did something happen?’

Karen shrugs. ‘The world ended. Didn’t you notice?’

**

**

He finds Ben outside his office. The guy hasn’t been sleeping either, clearly, but he smells like rubbing alcohol. Hospitals. (A wife in the ward) As Ben leans against his car and says Matt reminds him of a boxer, he crouches a little further in the shadows, and parries the comment. This is like Karen all over again, and matt is abruptly sorry he ever handed Ben the little white packet while his own life is unravelling at the edges. _So many people, Matt, so many people need to carry your shit_. But Ben Ulrich is like a bloodhound on the trail, even through the haze of exhaustion that clings to him he tells Matt that its Chinese heroin, pure like nothing you’ve ever seen before. He nods curtly and melts away into the darkness.

When Matt phones Karen the next morning, he makes sure Foggy knows to stay away, but he forgets about Ben.

 

**

 

Slipping into the warehouse is the most overwhelming thing he has ever done since he found Claire beaten up and bloody in the Russians’ garage. Madame Gao smells like _nothing_.  _They blinded themselves_ , she’d said. _For faith, and you took it from them_. Blind faith. Does faith come with blindness and their fear had rolled over him like thick waves –

 The blow to his chest is administered with the force of ten men in a tiny palm. He goes skidding across the floor like he’s twelve years old and underweight. When he looks up, she’s gone. He can’t even hear her heartbeat retreating.

 **

 

Karen knows, instinctively, when he comes into the office, not to ask him any questions. She stares instead, and Matt realizes he hadn’t even thought to comb his hair before he came. What is happening to him? This all started with Foggy finding him; like pulling on a loose strand of wool that unravels an entire sweater. Now Karen’s affected too, bending under the strain, still sitting vigil (for what?) at her desk, and looking at Matt expectantly, like today he’s going to magically fix things.

The silence stretches uncomfortably, and Matt mumbles as he shuffles into his office.

There is a deep breath behind him. ‘Is this what we are now? Three people who don’t even talk to each other?’

No. He hates it, and that’s exactly what’s wrong. He’s not supposed to hate it this much but that’s what he is, he’s weak. When Gao tossed him across the floor an hour ago, he never felt more fragile in his life. Too fragile to live his double lives when both of them are breaking apart like fucking continents.

_I don’t have a normal anymore; I lost the Cartesian coordinates of my being, Karen. I lost him; he walked out the door and never looked back. I actually feel blind today._

He tries to tell her, in so many words, but telling her about Stick is not going to make any sense; he knows he’s babbling. He’s babbling because he wants to yell. Matt is not who Stick thought he was; he’s not even who he thought he was. The office echoes without Foggy, just Karen’s muted heartbeat and his own. _Soft things_ , Stick had sneered.

I can’t take… another _step_ … alone’.

Karen’s shoulder is hard and bony when his voice breaks, and she pulls his forehead down.

Ben is murdered that night.

**

Karen fades even further from his senses, but Matt’s hand in the crook of her elbow keeps her upright at the funeral. Doris Ulrich is in her wheelchair, and Karen is hiccupping with tears, crying with the utter abandon of someone who’s terrified. Matt frowns like he can smite himself into dust, for forgetting about Ben, for treating him too much like he was a fixed point in their little solar system. He took Ben completely for granted, because he was too busy worrying about Foggy instead. Foggy, who couldn’t even turn up to place a flower on Ben’s grave.

He hates himself for being angrier about that than the sound of the clods of dirt hitting the coffin.

**


	4. Chapter 4

 

Matt can’t seem to get out of bed the next morning, like the weight of something is pressing his shoulders into the mattress, like Fisk has a forearm shoved against his windpipe, grinding him into the brick. Absently, he touches the small but deep bruise forming over his breastbone from Gao’s blow. He can’t meditate, either; there’s too much rage in his system, and he keeps going over and over and over the sequence of events.

Eventually, he levers himself upright and puts on his socks. _They’ve got ducks on them_ , Foggy had said, pushing them into Matt’s hands at a Nelson Christmas dinner, _it also doesn’t hurt that they’re organic cotton, Your Highness._ They’re Matt’s favourite socks in the universe, and he keeps them for a rainy day; he’s just been having a rainy week. Grabbing his phone from the bedside table, he dials Karen’s number.

 

She picks up just as he’s about to put it down.

 

‘Hey, Matt’, Karen sighs.

 

They stay silently on the line for the space of two breaths before they say simultaneously –

 

‘I can’t come in today, sorry – ‘

 

‘ – I was about to call and say I’m taking an off fro – ‘

 

‘Oh. Sure. Take some rest. How’re you holding up today?’

 

A sharp, bitter laugh. ‘How do you think? Life is shit. But I had a breakfast bagel on my way to Ben’s place.’

 

‘Are you visiting Doris? That’s nice.’

 

‘Mm. Least I can do.’ Fashionable pumps on the sidewalk, with slightly scuffling steps.

 

‘Hey, remember what you said to me about Foggy? About him thinking Elena’s murder was his fault? I need to tell _you_ that now, Karen; Ben’s death was not your fault. Listen carefully. It was Fisk, we know this, and we will _get_ him. I don’t know how, or how soon, but we fucking will.’

Karen’s breathing is changing on the other side of the line, tears somewhere deep in her throat, a combination of Matt swearing and perhaps the blunt acknowledgement of the two people they buried so soon after one another. Allies, partners. Their rag-tag band is shrinking, and Matt feels it corroding the boundaries of his self like acid. These friends are now in past tense, a sort of mantra to be repeated before the fact that they’re really gone sinks in.

 

‘Oh God.’

 

‘We will, Karen, I promise. Please be safe on the way, alright? And tell Doris that if there’s anything, anything at all that I can do to help her, I will.’

 

She sniffs, nodding. He can hear her hair brushing the tiny microphone. ‘Yes, okay, bye.’

 

~*~

 

The gym is the gym, like it has always been. There he is, ten years old and sitting at that table sticky with beer stains from overenthusiastic spectators, his father dodging and swerving as his feet moved quick and graceful over the floor, frowning a little in concentration. He learns faster every day, aided by a sharp mind and the stubbornness he inherits from Jack. 

 _All right, Jackie-O_ , the other boxers would say, thumping his father’s back with the respect and affection that comes from training together. _Oi, Bat-Mat_ , said one boxer named Samsa; he had a little girl about Matt’s age, and he always carried some candy in his pockets. He’d ruffle his hair and Matt would clutch the candy tightly, unable to make himself eat the toxic-smelling things, but wishing really, really hard that Samsa would bring his daughter to the gym one day. Matt could make a friend. It has been so long since Matt had a friend.

 

Shaking off the memories as they touch his skin like ghosts, Matt hooks one of the weight bags to the ceiling, and begins wrapping his hands. If he lets himself, he can almost feel his father callused touch warm over his, correcting his folds, his large hands bracketing Matt’s small, pale fingers with love. Just like that, son. _There you go, now you can beat up your old man without breaking those finger bones; yeah, punk, the ones you need for reading!_ His father would ruffle his hair and press a brief kiss into his hair. _Read, so you can go to college, promise?_

There’s no point lying to himself about it, he comes here for the company. Of nostalgia and reverence. With a significant portion of the money his father left him, Matt bought the gym right after he landed his internship at Landman and Zack. Every time he holds the key to the front door in his hand he thinks _, Hi dad, I’m home_. 

 

Today, he’s startled when he hears Foggy coming around the corner. Foggy’s footsteps reach the door, and then instead of walking right by, he walks in. 

Matt keeps his fists moving.

Foggy smells like sex and Marci and printer ink. Anger flares in Matt’s gut. This? He missed Ben’s funeral for this? He slows, and eventually stills as Foggy leans against the ropes silently.

 

‘How’d you know I was here?’

 

‘I’ve known about your outlet for a while. I didn’t say anything because I thought it had something to do with your dad.’ Foggy shrugs calmly and speaks in a voice that's determinedly flat. ‘Now I know better.’

 

Matt still feels a twinge of guilt at that, and he's angry that he does. All his life has been wave after wave of remorse; big waves, little ones, constantly washing over him as he struggled to put a wall around himself, a boy who wanted nothing more than to belong, to let the light of absolution inside himself. There's what he wants, and then there is what he can realistically have. Foggy is both. 

But he never thought Foggy could deceive him so completely, not when he was always an open book to Matt. In a giant balance sheet he keeps in his head, scarred with little lines like Robinson Crusoe's rock, Matt keeps score of his deceit. Other people's deceit. Foggy's column is a short stub next to Matt's, but he adds a notch today. _What the hell_ , though, because Foggy kept this to himself to give Matt space. It's one lie. Matt has lied with his body, Matt has lied with his words.

 

The same Christmas that Foggy got him the socks, he also bought him the red glasses. Back then, Foggy still smoked, and he’d wandered out to the deck after dinner to find Foggy leaning against the railings.

_'Ew, gross', Matt complained as he clack-clacked his cane along the floorboards. Foggy jumped, startled despite the creak of the screen door._

_'Oh, sorry buddy'. He ground nearly half a cigarette under his heel and threw a heavy arm around Matt’s shoulders, pulling him close. 'Hey, you know, I've actually got another present for you.'_

_'Wha_ _t, no! Really?'_

_'Yes, Murdock. I am officially sick of you shamelessly copying my man Keanu from The Matrix with those dumb things. They're atrocious and stereotypical.' Matt cackled. Foggy teased him endlessly about the glasses from, oh, day two of being roommates._

_'But I'm blind, Foggy, I don't really care what they look like! And besides, these ones were given to me by. Uhm. Hmm.' Foggy's too distracted by retrieving a box from inside his jacket to notice that. 'You shouldn’t have. At all.'_

_'Look, there's no gift wrapping on it, because I guess there's no point in that for you, but, dude you better like them or I'll …make you watch Matrix Revolutions when we get back.' Foggy threatens, but he's a little nervous. Inside the box is a spectacle case, and inside the spectacle case is a pair of heavy round metal frames, with thick glass lenses. Foggy clears his throat. 'They're, um, not fully opaque, but they're pretty dark. Also red'._

_Matt picks them up carefully. They're expensive, and custom made. (_ Foggy _, he says intensely, in his mind) He slips off his own and holds them out to him. Foggy's heartbeat skips. The first time in a long, long time. It hasn't sounded this loud since that first day. Matt wonders absently what his eyes look like now, he remembers them being dark, but he's not sure if he's confusing his own eyes with his father's. He looks up at Foggy with his naked gaze, and Foggy's heart goes into overdrive._

_'Just think of this as a fashion intervention, my friend' Foggy lies, smoothly, as though these glasses that will sit on Matt's nose all his life are just socks._

_Matt puts them on. Foggy's heart does something Matt hasn’t heard it do, ever. It beats a tattoo so fast it sounds like rain._ _Matt is infinitely grateful Foggy can't hear his, too._

_Foggy chuckles a little, 'Dude, you look like a hotter version of Lennon.' He makes a peace sign, and explains quickly 'I just made a peace sign.' Matt nods, like he had no idea. His heart is calming down, humour stealthily calibrated like a pressure valve. Foggy lies with his laughter._

_Matt lies with his body, Matt lies with his words._

_'I don't remember what John Lennon looks like'_

_'You blind bastard, he's an icon! Sacrilege! Don't let my mother hear, she will personally beat you up.'_

_'Mrs Nelson loves me more than she loves you, Foggy'._

_Foggy sighs. 'Yeah. She sure does, buddy. Come on in and show the fam how you look. They shall surely defend my taste. He looks away hesitantly for a second. 'Matt, you do like them, right?_

_'More than I can say, My friend. Thank you.'_

_Matt reaches for his old pair but Foggy says 'Nuh-uh. I'm burning these.'_

_He feels his heart lurch with... something.  Well, he knows what it is. He adds a notch in his column._

_Matt wishes desperately that Foggy had a secret from Matt. Something other than how his heart goes a little unsteady on a really, really good day. Something other than this perplexingly deep loyalty that makes him feel like a shit. Matt's hiding one more secret from Foggy these days, and it's the worst of all. Stick always warned him against soft things._

_Foggy's the softest thing in Matt's life._

He hits the weight bag with his right fist so viciously that the nail holding it to the ceiling shifts in protest, and he pummels it hard.

 

'Thought you'd be out, punching people in the head or whatever you do.' There's that shrug again, and the carefully flat tone. Matt lets Foggy take his jabs.

 

'Paid Ben's editor a visit.'

 

That hadn't worked out, and he hits savagely, holding the bag in place with his left hand, strangely egged on by Foggy's scrutiny. _This is who I am, Foggy. Here in this place where my father let the devil out, you can see who I was all along_. Foggy opens and closes his mouth before he says 'Looks like you have some anger issues, wanna talk about it?'

Fuck you, Matt thinks. He gives up wrecking the bag to keep himself calm. 'You're not my priest, Foggy; whom you might have met if you actually turned up for Ben's funeral.'

There's a breath, and Foggy seems to slump inwards. Guilt. Matt should feel relief, he realises. All these years he's spent craving for one moment, just one, where Foggy, not him, was the one who did something abhorrent, and now, he can't bring himself to feel victorious at all.

 

'Karen upset?' Foggy's eyebrows have drawn up in genuine remorse.

 

 _Yes she was_ , Matt doesn’t say. Unwinds the tape from his hands; suddenly he's tired, and he wants this to stop. Foggy smells like his shampoo and his Foggy-smell, underneath Marci, and the old ache flares up like arthritis in his heart. He  _wants._

 

'Told her this was my fault, all this between you and me.'

 

Foggy nods, bobbing his head gently. Then he shakes his head and corrects 'I just nodded.' There's no venom in his voice when he turns to squint at Matt. 'You could tell that, right?'

Matt is stunned. And immediately ashamed. Foggy is beginning to adjust to this, just like he's adjusted to caring for Matt's needs, real and pretend, in college. He only let Matt trip over his wet towels on the floor twice before he never repeated that mistake again. Mat would bump into furniture, keep his hands tightly fisted to avoid snatching Foggy's softball out of the air, he'd lie and lie, and Foggy moulded himself to fit. _Oh, Foggy_. _You're the real saint here, enduring and enduring me._

Foggy missed the funeral because he was aggressively pursuing a paper trail with Marci's help. Matt can hardly believe this; he kept his word on turning his sheaf of notes as the Devil into real, admissible evidence - now of all times when he should drop it all, now after Ben. Matt slams his hands into the floor of the ring and growls at Foggy, hoping to frighten him into listening to Matt the way that he sometimes will. 'Ben is dead, Foggy, because he got dragged into this. And now you're doing the same with your ex'.

Foggy's earnest and not even a little intimidated.

'We're being careful,' Foggy assures him, but there's always Fisk in his dreams, pressing Matt down while he kicks helplessly. Everything is worse since The Fight, and all he can see when Foggy talks like this is Fisk looming behind his shoulder, crushing his blonde head between his hands with enraged zeal. Matt shudders. He drags a hand down over his face. Foggy won't stop now, because this is the same Foggy who left Landman and Zack, because it made his stomach churn with nausea when the partners shat on the little man, day after day after heartless day. And then Foggy will run himself into the ground, into _Fisk_ , because Ben.

Enough heroism for us both, Matt realises. My father deserved a son like Foggy. Matt never deserved him, and he deserves him less every day. Foggy's back, and he's hoisted Matt onto his shoulders again, holding him high.  His rock-steady Titan.

It's about time he stopped leaning on his Atlas, and tried to shoulder the weight of his actions himself. Matt shrugs on his jacket andturns to walk away.

'Matt!' Foggy shouts, sharp and afraid and Matt finds his traitorous body answering, tilting on its axis to find its sun. 'The last time you went after Fisk I found you half-dead!  _More than half._ If you go after him in the mask again he might kill you! Or _you_ might kill him! Which would probably have the same effect on someone as Catholic as you!'

Foggy, Matt remembers, was excellent at debates. He had an unassuming way of using very ordinary sentences and direct phrases to present an unshakeable case. Matter-of-fact and implacable. Foggy would crow with victory if he knew this was exactly what he discussed with Father Lantom. Crudely but effectively put, someone as Catholic as you, well done Foggy. It's Matt's turn to lob the ball at him.

 

'How do I stop him?

 

'By using the law, Matt, like you told Karen and me to do'. _No more unequal laws for you and me, buddy,_ his tone says. 'We are going to take him down'.

 

Matt's eyes widen. 'We? I thought Nelson and Murdock were over.'

 

Foggy relents, and there's that catch in his voice 'There is nothing I wouldn't do to go back to the way things were. But... I don't know if we can.'

 

 _Take this olive branch, and cling to it like a leaf. Trust Foggy to be the better man; always, the better man. Warm and steady and born of hope._  He hopes his voice doesnt betray how close he is to grabbing Foggy about the knees to stop him from ever leaving again. A swallow.'Maybe we can't, but we can ...find a way to move forward'. He sounds like he feels. _Yes p_ _lease Foggy, let's not fight_. Shifting his weight from one foot to the other, he waits as Foggy breathes out and closes his mouth. 

There's silence, and in its interstices Matt can feel Foggy weighing everything - Nelson and Murdock, Maverick and Goose, Spanish and Punjabi, and five odd years of how much this friendship is worth. _The court hereby rules._

All at once he closes the gap between them and pulls Matt into a hug, fisting his left hand in his jacket, and his chin on Matt's shoulder. Matt presses his eyes closed, afraid his overwhelming relief is literally going to pour out of his eyes. 'Dammit, Matty', Foggy mumbles, his jaw bumping Matt's shoulderblade. 'You absolute dick. I still hate you, you know, and everything has to be different. From now on, whatever stupid thing you think of doing, you're discussing it with me first. He pushes Matt away and holds him at arm's length. Gives him a little shake. 'At least give me the chance to help you. If you die on me...' 

Foggy pulls in him instead of finishing that thought. His heart stutters against Matt, and fuck this, Matt knows he's crying. He nods against Foggy's hair and sniffs 'I, uh, I nodded'. 

'Yeah I got that', comes the muffled reply.

~*~ 

 

As he takes Matt's gym bag from him and watches him unfold his cane, Foggy breathes heavily through his nose, like he's been running, and Matt finds himself blurting out, 'I'm sorry, again, about all this.' Foggy jerks his chin. Matt takes the glasses out of the case where he keeps them and settles them on the bridge of his nose. He is preparing a face to meet all the faces he will meet, only this time, Foggy's watching the process. It feels quietly momentous. Blind Matt Murdock, Act I, Scene II.

He wonders if Foggy is experiencing disgust, or disdain right now, and is surprised to find that Foggy has extended his elbow to him, like it isn't a big deal, helping Matt be someone else. Foggy will lie with his body too, for Matt's sake. He carries them both, monumentally generous. 

He can't help if he smiles up a little adoringly into Foggy's face. 'I'm glad you're with me, Samwise Gamgee.'

Foggy snorts and leads them out into the winter sunshine. 

 

~*~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did I rewatch the whole series? You betcha.


End file.
